U6V

Asus has enjoyed a fair amount of media and consumer attention thanks to its little ones — the Eee PC netbooks. That’s not to say that its line-up in the mainstream laptop segment is lacking — far from it if you cast a glance at the gamer-friendly G50V and the eco-oriented U6V ‘Bamboo’ notebooks. With both models, Asus has managed to clothe very capable insides in attractive outsides — the question to ask is, does it serve the needs of the ‘niche’ audience? Let’s find out.

The G50V bucks all conventional wisdom when it comes to gaming laptop design — instead of building a large and heavy form factor, Asus has kept the display down to a mainstream notebook 15.4-in display, resulting in a not-too-heavy-to-tote-around 3.3kg package. The mainstream bit ends at the display though, the rest of the G50V says “gamer”, no matter what way you look at it.

Start with the lid. The G50V is adorned with two LED light bars located at either end of the lid edges and a horizontal light bar that spans about half of the lid, all of which blink in patterns.

G50V

For those of you who are curious, you can configure the blinking patterns to match your CPU usage or follow a regular rhythmic pattern — it reminds me of a souped-up sports car, which is good visual imagery for a gaming laptop, I guess. And, at the top of the lid is a clear shield with a backlit ‘Republic of Gamers’ logo inside, if you had any doubt about the nationality of the gamer that’s using the laptop!

The flashy theme continues inside, with trim that’s a combination of glossy orange- red plastic (sides), rubber-ised texture (palmrest) and brushed aluminum (touchpad). Even the bottom of the notebook has an interesting take on fan design — the single large intake vent for the fan has a shiny silver border and an orange vent. If this doesn’t get you noticed wherever you go, nothing will.

The 15.4-in display is gorgeous, but I couldn’t help but wish it had a higher resolution panel. Where the G50V scores, is its use of a full-sized keyboard, complete with a numeric keypad and its unique OLED display. This can display a message, the battery charge remaining, CPU usage, memory usage and other useful information such as messages from MSN Messenger or new e-mail notifications.

This is a nice touch, though I would prefer to see more functionality added to this, such as frames per second (FPS) readings during games. Also, it suffers in the battery department and lacks a decent set of speakers, though most gamers would prefer a high-quality headset instead (Asus packages one, along with a backpack and a Logitech gaming mouse).

G50V

As a gaming laptop, the G50V has plenty of power under the hood in terms of processor, hard disk and memory. But with a mid-range Nvidia GeForce 9700M GT discrete graphics with 512MB of RAM, the G50V fared well but, not surprisingly, fell short of the top performers on the desktop. While this is to be expected, one certainly hoped better from a laptop that comes at such a princely sum. Having said that, it may appeal to gamers who’re looking for a portable and very stylish gaming rig, but the serious gamer can give it a pass.

From flashy orange machines to one that will be right at home among the giant pandas. Yep, that’s right — there’s enough bamboo on the Asus U6V Bamboo to tempt our furry friends into a nibble. Covering the palm rest, the lid and even the touchpad and mouse buttons, the bamboo layer looks stylish and draws a fair share of attention when you pull it out.

Looking beyond the bamboo though, the U6V is a powerful little machine — don’t let its looks fool you. It may well be slim and small (with the 12.1-in screen 1280 x 800 pixel screen), the U6V is specced with a powerful 2.53GHz Core2Duo CPU with upto 4GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM, so it’s no softy.

The screen is bright and sharp and the keyboard and mouse are comfortable to use. Other features include a webcam, fingerprint reader, DVD-writer and HDMI output. However, the mediocre NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS graphics chip means it will not play the newest games.

The U6 series from Asus have always been about stylish portability, so it’s not a surprise that the U6V is priced at this point. It’s surprising that it lacks Bluetooth, but other than that, this is not a laptop I would recommend to anyone but the (rich) fanatical environmentalist. While its specs may be excellent for almost any everyday task, you can have the same in other laptops as well, albeit without the bamboo and the form-factor. A wood…sorry … good buy, but there’re better.

Quick Specs

ASUS G50V

• Rating: 7/10
• Price: Rs 1.15 lakh MRP

ASUS U6V ‘Bamboo’

• Rating: 7/10
• Price: Rs 1.10 lakh MRP
• URL: http://in.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=5

Green cover

Know what’ll go really well with the bamboo laptop? A bed of grass to charge your other gadgets! No seriously, the Grass Charging Valet from Taylor Gifts won’t charge your devices — it will, however, let you conceal your current entanglement of chargers beneath an elegant patch of 100 per cent fake grass. Way to go green, in your very own gadgety kind of way!

• URL: http://www.taylorgifts.com/prodetail~itemNo~29845.asp
• Price: $30

Share ware

Here’s one that rates high on practicality. The $71 AC-powered U2SW-B27SBK hub from Elecom lets you share upto seven USB 2.0/1.1 devices simultaneously across a pair of USB connected computers — Mac or PC. It’ll even share a USB keyboard and mouse between machines, and includes a little change-over switch that’s supposed to allow for a hassle-free swap-in and out from either computer.

• URL: http://www.elecom.co.jp
• Price: $71